Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Night at the Museum / USA / 2006

“A pea-brained fantasy-comedy with a riot of kid-pleasing special effects.” —Jan Stuart, Newsday

“Charmless fantasy” —Michael Phillips, Chicago Sun-Times

“It’s unconscionable for a major studio release to feature such shoddy effects. Throughout the entire film, everything looked as fake as could be.” —Bill Zwecker, Chicago Sun-Times

The difficulty in assessing this film is that most critics not only expected it to be a miserable failure (director Shawn Levy’s last film was The Pink Panther) but obviously viewed it as stuffy, unimaginative adults. I’m not saying children’s films can’t be deep and profound—The Fox and the Hound and March of the Penguins are two examples—but you shouldn’t expect a film about a T-Rex playing fetch and an emotionally repressed Attila the Hun to be the next Godfather.

Night at the Museum follows the oft-used premise of contemporary family films: Desperate family man finds himself in new surroundings; radical things happen that he is completely unprepared for; at the same time he falls for a kind-hearted, kid-loving woman whom he alienates by revealing everything; in the end he manages to save the day, and everything works out great for him. Blah, blah, blah. No matter where this story is set, be it at the Museum of Natural History or the North Pole, it usually proceeds the same, and Night at the Museum is no exception. The color-by-numbers set-up is eye-rolling, the final outcome is predictable, and the monkey-for-laughter device has become old.

Despite these flaws, the film has an incredible number of redeeming qualities. Though advertisements made Night at the Museum seem like another extravaganza of Stiller-Wilson idiocy, Stiller’s character is more of a loser than a clueless moron; divorced, he and his ex-wife are on very friendly terms, as are he and his son’s stepfather. (As someone who grew up with The Santa Clause and its cookie-cutter offspring, this was an incredible relief.) Robin Williams embodies Teddy Roosevelt with a newfound and welcomed restraint, while Ricky Gervais’ Mr. McPhee isn’t the flat, cold-blooded presence we initially take him to be. But the pièce de resistance is the casting of three old men—Dick van Dyke, Mickey Rooney, and Bill Cobbs—as night guards forced into retirement. A wonderful inclusion that works twofold: introducing kids to three great comedic actors and allowing adults the chance to see Rob Petrie and Andy Hardy whoop ass and dance.

I’ll freely admit that Night at the Museum made me laugh, especially with a late scene involving the deflation of a tire. (And, if I’m not mistaken, the writers threw in subtle, verbal nod to Brokeback Mountain for the sake of added absurdity.) I choose to overlook the sour moments, not because I’m a fan of Ben Stiller or museum humor, but because my inner child tells me to.

by Adam Balz | Source: 35MM Theatrical Print
31 Dec 2006 1:11 PM | Submit Comment